Barikot

Barikot (بریکوٹ‎) (Pashto: بریکوټ) is a town located in the middle course of the Swat River in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is located about away from Mingora and the Butkara Stupa. It is the entrance town to the central Swat Valley with a population of approximately 25,000 people. Barikot is the location of an ancient citadel captured by Alexander the Great, with Chalcolithic remains dating back to 1700 BCE, and an early-historic period town dating back to 500 BCE. The Italian Archaeological Mission (renamed ISMEO) founded by Giuseppe Tucci has been excavating ruins of the ancient town of Bazira under Barikot since 1984. It was thought the oldest layer under Barikot was a village which has been dated to 1100–1000 BC, but previous Chalcolithic pit structures are attested since 1700 BC. Early Iron Age proto-urban layers were found, and dated to eleventh-eight centuries BC, archaeologists also found that the fortified urban settlement in Barikot (lower area and acropolis) was established around mid-first millennium BC. The excavations have discovered a number of artifacts which document the daily life of the residents, including coins, pottery and weapons. Several large artifacts including, a large green-schist statue of Siddhartha Buddha riding his horse Kanthaka and a carving of a stupa with two lions, document the Buddhist history of Bazira. Another statue depicting an unknown deity sitting on a throne, with long, curled hair, holding a wine goblet and a severed goat head in his hands may represent Dionysus, the Greek god of wine or another local deity. The first traces of human presence in Barikot are from ca. 1700 to 1400 BC, as per Giorgio Stacul (1987) findings, which he reported as belonging to Swat Period IV, these are pit remains attested since around 1700 BC. During excavation campaigns in 2016–2017, the Italian Archaeological Mission was able to identify the transitional phase from Late Bronze to Iron age, dating it c. 1200–800 BC.